Posted on 06/20/2014 7:39:41 AM PDT by SandRat
The U.S. House on Thursday overwhelmingly adopted an amendment to the 2015 defense appropriation bill that would prohibit the Pentagon from spending any money to retire the A-10 Thunderbolt II jet — a mainstay of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
But the fate of the venerated “Warthog” close-air-support jet remains far from certain, as the Senate still must act, and the issue will likely be hammered out in conference committee.
The amendment’s bipartisan adoption was a victory for Rep. Ron Barber, a Tucson Democrat, and other A-10 supporters, who were chagrined when the House Appropriations Committee left A-10 funding out of its version of the defense spending bill.
“This is a victory for those brave men and women in our armed forces and engaged in ground combat who depend on the A-10,” Barber said in prepared remarks after the late-evening vote. “I am fighting for the A-10 to remain in service because there is no better and more effective aircraft for close air support of our soldiers and Marines on the ground.”
The amendment, primarily sponsored by Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., and Barber, passed on a 300-to-114 vote, with support split almost evenly between Republicans and Democrats.
The amendment prohibits the Pentagon from spending any money to “divest, retire, transfer or place in storage, or prepare to divest, retire, transfer or place in storage any A-10 aircraft.” It also prohibits the Pentagon from closing any active or reserve unit that flies or is otherwise associated with the A-10, Barber’s office noted.
“The Air Force wants to save money, but they don’t have an adequate follow-on at this time, and with what’s happening in Iraq and the Middle East, eliminating the A-10 is the absolute wrong move,” Miller said in a news release.
But where to find the money to keep the A-10 flying remains a major issue.
Opponents, including the chairman and ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, called the A-10 retirement spending ban disingenuous because it would raise no funds for the A-10, requiring the Air Force to scramble to find about $500 million.
Miller said during debate on the bill Wednesday that A-10 backers were told by the House’s leadership that proposals that identified funding offsets to pay for continued A-10 operations would be blocked on procedural grounds.
A measure to fund the A-10 for a year in the House-passed version of the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act attracted opposition because it would use $635 million in an as-yet-unsettled overseas war fund. An amendment adopted by the Senate Armed Services Committee would use $339 million in operations funding to pay for A-10 operations for a year.
But the Senate has yet to bring its committee version of the authorization bill to floor debate and a full vote, and the upper chamber has not yet passed its defense appropriations bill out of committee.
Both the defense authorization bill — which sets spending policy but may not dictate actual appropriations — and the defense appropriations bills eventually passed by both chambers will have to be reconciled in conference committees before final votes in both houses.
The A-10 will be replaced by the F-35 the F-35 Costs $182 Million to $299 Million Per Plane. Right now the B-1 bomber is doing CAS and it costs 300 million per plane. Neither the F-35 nor the B-1 can do CAS as well as an A-10. The Air force should give the A-10’s to the Marines rather then retire it. Unfortunately there is some kind of stupid rules that say the US Army can not operate fixed winged aircraft. That rule needed to be done away with so the Army can operate A-10’s too.
I’m ready to make a low ball bid on one with it’s weapons systems disabled.
Love to fly one out of this little airport.
Shake up the neighborhood.
Add me to the list of Warthog fans. What a great war machine!
Solve the problem once and for all:
Make an inter-service transfer of all aircraft, support equipment and personnel to the Army and/or the USMC. The folks who really need and appreciate CAS should own and control the assets.
“While sitting in your trench ,you could lift your arm and light a match on the belly of these things”
That would make an awesome visual if anyone could manipulate the CGI.
This all goes back to the Key West Agreement of 1947-48, excluding the Army from the CAS role. Also, the MOU from 1951 between the Army and Air Force restricted Army FW aircraft to a 5,000 lb empty weight, although exceptions were made in the late 50’s- early 60s for the CV-2 (later C-7) Caribou and OV-1 Mohawk aircraft.
There are a heckuva lot of state Guard and Reserve units flying the A-10, so it was easy to get House support. Now let’s see of the Senate can back up the House, and if Zero will sign the papers.
As the article states, the real issue will be that the Air Force is not provided the funding to actually keep them operational.
IIRC this happened years ago with the USN carrier fleet. The USN wanted to retire the USS Kennedy. Congressional legislation prohibited it from doing so. So it parked the ship at Mayport FL with a skeleton crew and, ostensibly, kept it “in commission” for a few years.
Unless funding is found, that’s exactly what’s going to happen to the A-10 fleet. The planes will be parked where they are with no preservation and little to no maintenance, the squadrons kept “open” with minimal/cadre staffing all the while the experience to maintain and operate them is passively drawn down to the point where they can only be returned to combat-read status through exorbitant expenditure of funding.
Which should hint at why they would be so boneheaded as to think about sending it to the boneyard
The recipients of the spoils
Nothing magical about TF-34s that were built in the 1970s, originally for the S-3 Viking.
Any modern business jet engine in the same 9,000 lb thrust class would do.
The A-10 is exactly what we should have in Iraq now!!!
The stupid survalance flights aren’t worth squat!
“Personally I believe a 5/8 scale A-10 drone with miniguns instead of the GAU-8 would be an awesome weapon, though more anti-personnel versus anti-tank.”
CAS without a pilot at the battlefield is stupid. It is the brain a few feet above ground that makes the different between CAS and precision bombing from great heights.
I love this aircraft. I have seen them between the hills of the Odenwald in Germany. I have never heard them coming and even going.
The problem with this aircraft is quite simple. It is a simple and cheap aircraft. The industry can’t make big money with it.
CAS with the F-35A? There are cheaper aircraft to drop a bomb from high altitudes.
CAS with the F-35B? Did work superb with the AV-8B Harrier in Afghanistan. Dirt and dusty runway? ...
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